Trans guy looking fly

Did this quick doodle a few days ago, used it as value practice! :D

Ah yes, the wings that I totally intended to draw, creating a symbolic representation of toothless giving hiccup his own wings that totally didn’t happen by accident, and I definitely didn’t realize it because of these tags…

Sometimes, we stumble upon masterpieces! Sometimes, they are purposeful. Sometimes, the ink spilled, and it led to something better.

This drawing is amazing! I love the scenery! 🩵

i’m still not over the fact that, upon meeting vader and faced with imminent death, sabé just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and introduced herself as the ghost of padmé amidala, there to “haunt him to his grave”

like this girl has more balls than every single star wars character combined

she WHAT

yEAH SHE DID THAT

DAMNNNN SHE REALLY DID THAT HOLY SHIT 😭

For @mace-windu-appreciationweek ;)

This is for day 6 theme “Badass”

Very much a WIP, as I couldn’t finish the piece in time. Will post the finished painting probably, but I have to survive my exams first…

Iain McCaig's design for a medusa senator (December 1, 1995). McCaig "The art department worked on conceptual design at Skywalker Ranch. There was no screenplay, and if there was, we hadn’t read it; it was given to us verbally. Everything was very wide open...you could come up with anything you felt like drawing that day and somehow it seemed to fit in. The joke was always, if you couldn't figure out a place for it, it was a senator on Coruscant." - The Star Wars Archives Episodes I-III (1999-2005) by Paul Duncan

Superman: Red And Blue #05

This is great.

Superman is a man, raised by humans as a human to be a good person and moved by compassion and the need to do good in the world.

I wish this interpretation appeared more in movies and such

>a journalist

>doesn’t get along with military farther-in-law

> unconditionally loves his Bi son

>spent most of the 30s and 40s destroying crooked business and forcing the government to make affordable housing

>will throw a billionaire off a roof

I see Superman is taking inspiration from his best friend Batman in that last panel. XD

Opposes the detention and deportation of immigrants.

@mamawasatesttube I know ur about that Superboy life but I saw a Superman appreciation post and thought you'd like to see it.

@stealingyourbones Superman appreciation post for ur eyes and dash

Lovely people of tumblr, if I may speak with my librarian hat* on for a moment:

If you are in the US, you may be aware that librarians are Going Through It because some malicious people believe in fascism and have decided to make that our problem. Whether you are in the US or not, there is something you can do to help your local librarians out:**

Say something nice to us.

You can post on social media and tag your library, you can find the library’s main phone number and call, you can go in person, you can send a card (we display cards in our break room)! I guarantee you that you will make the day of the person you talk to, we will immediately go tell all our colleagues how lovely you were, and you will help us live to love and fight another day.

*it is a fetching piece of millinery in purple silk

**I propose we make this an international group project. Whether your librarians are going through it or not, we all appreciate a kind word.

Well, my loves.

(downs three cups of coffee in quick succession)

The above advice remains one thousand percent true no matter where you are in the world, I would venture to say.

For those of you in the US, I am going to add that if you need a way to not feel helpless, getting involved with your library is a wonderful and *genuinely useful, will make a day to day difference in your neighbor’s lives* thing to do. Librarians are there to provide, vet, and guide you through reams of information. Give us a hand and everyone wins. This can look like:

- using the library and getting to know the staff

- if there’s a volunteer Friends group, join it! Or start one! These folks raise extra money for the library and often run things like book sales

- going to library board meetings and standing up during public comment time to talk about how much you love the library and the First Amendment

- if you have an elected library board, run for it. Usually the only qualification is you have to reside in the district the library serves.

- vote yes on library funding measures

Librarians have been fighting for your rights for years and while I’m sure some of us are tired, I have to confess I’m not. I’m full of love and determination and spite, in that order. Give us a hand and we can help keep each other safe and informed.

Co-signed, except if you go to a library board meeting and mention the First Amendment you may get a reflexive reaction from library folks who have experienced “First Amendment Audits” which are pretty much staff harassment in the name of My Rights, so it may be better to specifically praise examples of free speech you see in the library.

Go in June and tell them you love the Pride displays. Go in February and talk about Black History month. Go any time of the year and say how glad you are to see diverse authors, queer representation, etc. say you’d love to see more of those things, programs on those themes, all of it.

Library boards set budgets and policies and they NEED to hear from the part of their community that wants a drag queen at every storytime or they WILL decide they can’t risk pissing off the parts of the community who does show up to complain.

Might I add, also find out:

I know that was long but I hope it was helpful for readers who want to support their local libraries!

AMAZING additions. I’m especially co-signing the union support and running for library board. My library unionized about a year ago and two community members who got involved supporting us just ran for library board and won. Now we’ll have two pro-union board members the next time we negotiate, and the board member who was the biggest pain to work with lost the election and is no longer my problem. Being a union worker is something that is going to help me stay in the same job for a long time and do good work for the long haul.

Okay so this is a big deal

To me, and to a significant subset of Sir Terry's fans (including most of you who've found this by the tags), his writing is serious commentary on the human condition - politics, prejudice, self-control, revenge vs. justice, religion, idealism, faith in people vs. cynicism, and more - dressed up with fantasy settings and a hefty leavening of humor to make it fun to read. And it is WILDLY fun to read, actual laugh-out-loud or at least a snicker averaging about every page.

But there's this common idea among the "important literature" people that fun and funny books are not also worthwhile or important in the same way.

This is a Discworld book being released WITH ACADEMIC COMMENTARY and AS A PENGUIN CLASSIC. That's a HUGE amount of recognition.

@thebibliosphere

Oh, I’m about to tear up. I had to fight so hard to do my thesis on Pratchett because the university didn't like what they considered pop culture being studied as literature and this is just... Existing. 🥹

AYO WHAT

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL

“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”

My mom learned it because she figured she’ll go deaf when she gets old

My family went holiday SCUBA diving once, and a couple of Deaf guys were in the group. I was really little and I spent most of the briefing overcome with the realization that while the rest of us were going to have regulators in our mouths and be underwater fairly soon, they were going to be able to do all the same stuff and keep talking.

The only reason some form of sign language is not a standard skill is ableism, as far as I can tell.

For anyone interested in learning, Bill Vicars has full lessons of ASL on youtube that were used in my college level classes. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars

and here’s the link to the website he puts in his videos:

https://www.lifeprint.com/

Update: you guys this is an amazing resource for learning asl. Bill Vicars is an incredible teacher. His videos are of him teaching a student in a classroom, using the learned vocabulary to have conversations.

Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldn’t have otherwise know I was making.

He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way it’s actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms

His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.

Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore

And it’s all FREE. Seriously. If you’ve ever wanted to learn ASL

Co-signed endorsement of Bill Vicar’s work.

"how are the democrats so good at losing?" why don't you ask how the republicans are so good at winning?? stop acting like democrats are the only political party with agency. republicans do things on purpose.

^^ It seems to me that I haven’t seen many people acknowledging that republicans are good at winning because they lie and because they have a multimillion dollar industry committing to getting them elected and backing up their lies.

I’ve seen statistics correlating misinformed views to voting choice, a study about how respondents preferred Kamala’s policies over Trump’s when they weren’t told who had which set of policies, people discussing ‘vibes-based politics’—but in my opinion all this analysis is incomplete without confronting how republicans have a veritable propaganda machine working for them. It’s pretty hard for democrats to fight that. We have to rely on average donations from normal people when corporations/rich individuals can invest millions into networks who will try to get people elected who will give them tax breaks.

#seriously I want more people to talk about the sheer amount of damage rupert murdoch has done to this country#fox news is the most viewed cable news network in the country.#i remember a few months back harris’ campaign had success bringing project 2025 to the public’s attention#but democrats still don’t have anything comparable @choppywaterswiftboats

Fun fact that I will tell literally everyone all the time!!! A former Nixon staffer said they would have survived Watergate if they had their own news network. And that staffer's name was Roger Ailes!

Books to read:

Dark Money: An examination of the Koch Empire, and its patronage and entanglement in Right wing media, politics, and lobbying.

Messengers of the Right: A history of the conservative media landscape, beginning with talk radio (Clarence Manion, before the era of Rush Limbaugh), through periodicals like the National Review, and notable books, like God and Man at Yale. I'm sorry, but you don't know half as much as you think you do about American political history if you don't know who William F Buckley is. All of this walked, so Fox News could run.

Let Them Eat Tweets: A political synthesis of history, economics, and communication scholarship that posits wedge-issue-identity-politics as the method by which contemporary conservative parties drive their white working class bases away from class-based solidarity toward a party that serves only economic elites. That, Hacker and Pierson argue, is how you explain the escalation of billionaire oligopoly, rising economic inequality, and fanatic racism/other bigotries.

If you can understand these patterns and these histories, you'll begin to see why the GOP has nosedived into overtly fascist rhetoric, while STILL successfully courting voters who vote against their material economic interests.

There are no surprises here.

You can even see the ripples of that abroad. My parents watch the Canadian equivalent to the conservative channel and this summer were telling me about how “both parties are the same and Biden is sooooooo old”. They are people who would usually consider themselves aligned a bit left of the center (CANADIAN center). And yet they knew nothing of what Trump actually said or did at any point in this campaign or during his last term.

Two weeks ago, a firmly leftist friend, a queer person of colour, told me “but the democrats are financed by all the big evil corporations”. And then he named checked all the corporations that Biden and the DOJ have been raking over the coals because of their monopolies. And I was just like “you think AMAZON wants the dems to win??? You think FACEBOOK wants them to win??? GOOGLE??”

The propaganda is real and it’s everywhere.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

As a 30 year old man who escaped the Alt-right pipeline, you're not going to be happy about the answer.

All I hear from leftists is how much they hate me for my immutable traits, how much they blame me for everything wrong with the world, how much they want me and everyone who looks like me dead.

Whereas Alt-right types would call me "brother" and welcome me into their ranks so long as I hated the right ways.

Do you understand the difference?

I'm an ally and support equality because I feel it's the morally correct choice to make, but holy fuck is it difficult to reconcile that with the fact that means fighting for a lot of people who see you as the scum of the earth.

Read this and then read it again and then read some fucking bell hooks because this is a legitimate problem on the left.

"To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being." - bell hooks, The Will to Change https://bellhooksbooks.com/product/the-will-to-change/

ive seen people say the left should appeal to men more but not ask why it doesnt already. well why do all these right wing grift influencers appeal to men? its because they target impressionable young men who just got rejected and wanna hear that its womens fault no 1 wants to fuck them. i swear we need a big oily hyper masculine dudebro to start making videos titled "how to be instantly attractive to women" "15 male self improvement tips" "how i became an alpha male in 30 days" and the videos are just the guy sitting down and saying "hey dont stress about how you look or what other people think of you because the right person will love you for you. remember to take accountability for your actions and treat women with respect even when they reject you and see woman as people and not potential girlfriends" or something along those lines. like all his videos are just teaching self love, compassion for women, how to react to rejection ect then i swear there would be way more guys on the left

May I introduce you all to Dr. Nerdlove.

Harris O’Malley is a deeply compassionate man who saw this exact issue of young men not being met where they are and getting sucked into hate movements like Gamergate and Alpha Male dating optimizer bullshit. So he started a dating advice column to counter it. (Plus other social skills that isolated young men are missing out on).

He's a really great example of a leftist man who took on the work to be there for young men in danger of listening to grifters. I don't really see him talked about on this website. Good follow on Blue Sky, though.

I was intrigued by the idea of Dr. NerdLove and his "advice column for bros" approach, so I decided to check it out and folks....This is so good. Context: In my job, I offer one-on-one coaching to adolescents and young adults who have disabilities to help them meet their goals and transition into adult life/build skills for adulthood. Most of my students right now are young college-aged men (some of whom are in school and some of whom work.) One of the big things I do with them is helping to build and maintain social networks: MAKING FRIENDS!!!! Many of my students are lonely! For some of them, the social networks very much include wanting a partner. They ask me for advice about (usually heterosexual) romantic relationships. As a queer woman who's not much older than them (which is to say, not much relationship experience) I often struggle to know how to answer their questions. I just don't know what it looks like from their point of view. So, I thought something like this might be helpful to point them to. I'm not in the demographic the column is reaching to, but I did grow up in several friend groups where I was one of the only girls, and I had friends who got onto the early stages of that Gamergate/alpha male/incel pipeline. I'm an amateur anthropologist by degree, which means I learned a lot of stuff about how cultures and societies work, how to interview people about complex social problems, and how to make things more equitable for communities that need it. I read and see the same news as the rest of you. I work as a camp counselor for middle and high schoolers in the summers. All of which leads me to reaffirm for you: Our boys are not okay. A scary high number of them are getting exposed to online communities that are misinformed at best and predatory at worst, and they lack the experience to know how to counteract that. The election results are going to be like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Enter Dr. NerdLove. Harris O'Malley tells young men things they need to know and start to internalize, and he does it in a way that is relatable to them, compassionate, and humorous. One of my favorite articles is "What Men Really Need," In it, he talks about the social isolation many men face, how they struggle to get support and connection from their male friends in emotionally fulfilling ways, and how that's devastating for everyone. He also tells them how to be a better friend and change the dynamic.

In other articles, he explains the importance of building confidence, self-care, how to overcome feeling awkward, that looks aren't everything. (again, all in terms a boy who's been lurking around on certain Reddits would understand.) He makes a point to explain what some of the risks of dating and relationships are for women (and how history informs that.)

And yes. He's saying the quiet part out loud (linked text is a news source.)

This is going to help me be better equipped to help my students with something really important to them. I think it's also going to be a protective, positive force for a lot of boys who need it.

omg

this shit rules

Less magic schools. More magic universities. Unlearn the simplified models of your secondary education. Discover how to reference scrolls written by a wizard possessed by a different wizard. Identify bias in the voices that whisper from beyond the veil. Have your institution be accused of promoting a Merlinist agenda. Become addicted to energy potions.

I will continue to call The Creature “Frankenstein” and no force in Heaven or Earth will impede that.

I also laughed at him totally deliberately calling attention to the fact Victor isn’t a real doctor because he dropped out of college and built a guy out of corpses

He punched the lycanthropy right out of wolfman

did he just throw ygor out a window

Murder For Dummies, a horror comedy webseries satirizing the "true crime" genre by the showrunner of Dogs In Space and Jentry Chau Vs The Underworld who also wrote episodes of Gumball, is by far the tightest comedy writing on the entire internet, and it's not even a close competition Plus the mystery is ACTUALLY solvable, but boy did it stump me But the real crime is that it has only 5,000 views Watch all six episodes and just make your night better

This is like Good Place/30 Rock levels of joke density And this is level of production quality not otherwise found outside of paid streaming services

Tumblr YT recs always slap. Always.

I've been griping about the normalization of identity outing via social media for a while now. To put it simply, it's become almost some weird societal requirement that if you don't have every detail listed about yourself in your Twitter/FB/etc. bio, then it means you have "something to hide" or that you're not as "verifiable" because your account looks indistinct from that of a bot.

But that societal norm has really only benefited the people who profit off of that information in some way, whether it's through selling user data or through weaponizing details about a person against them.

I know that a lot of us love to use the fun little labels and acronyms in our bio that help others like us identify us as a 'safe person' or as someone who's in the same social/racial/identity groups as them. We're humans, we love to categorize things, it's in our nature (and it's fun!)

But if there's any time to start regulating that habit and challenging the norm that you're obligated to include all your personal info online - it's now.

There was a time when sock puppet accounts were expected and typical, not "suspicious".

There was a time when even age-sex-location was considered "too much information", but once it became the norm, we only EVER gave our personal information beyond generic ASL to people who we knew both online and in real life, or at the very least, people who we had known online for a significant enough amount of time that they had proved to be trustworthy (and even then, we didn't owe that information to anyone, ever; there are forum friends who I made online 10+ years ago and still talk to who do not know my personal information beyond broad strokes).

There was a time when simply being an avatar with a funny username was enough. And it still is enough, but massive platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been brainwashing us for years to believe that's not the case, under the guise of, "You wouldn't want to be dishonest, would you?" Through these same norms, we were led to believe that anime profile pictures are cringe, that having a fake online name is stupid, that the photos of you having fun at social events have to be taken JUST right otherwise you might imply to others that you're not actually having fun.

And considering how long these platforms have been around now, we have entire generations of children now who have been born and raised on that version of the ZuckMusk web, who have been taught that it "protects them" to express to everyone publicly their age, their school, their workplace, their family members, everything about themselves, because to not do so would be disingenuous.

None of this is to imply that the Internet was "safer" back in the day. I definitely should not have been on the Internet as much as I was when I was 13 in the late 2000's, it definitely did not benefit my brain development or my social skills. But the version of the Internet we currently exist in now is one that's been predicated on the false sense of security - the belief that if you're honest, everyone else has to be, too.

We've always had ways of identifying our safe people - by participating in the communities that we know are designed around our hobbies, our interests, our people. They might be small, they might not be as "cool" as the idea of netting yourself a big following of thousands of people, but they're also a lot safer and more genuine than that idealized following ever could be.

Don't feel pressured to include every bit of information about yourself in your bio. Even on Facebook, there's no rule that says you have to list your workplace, your school, your family members. There's no rule that says you have to list your personality type, queer labels, and neurodivergent disorders in your Twitter bio. There's no rule that you have to "prove" your life is real and fulfilled through the verification of photos, location tagging, and open-book sharing. If you share those photos, it should be because you genuinely want to share them, not because you feel some societal pressure to live up to others' expectations.

And I guarantee you, even your local mutuals on Facebook - your former classmates, family friends, distant relatives, coworkers, etc. - do not actually give that much of a damn about your personal life that they should be owed that much of a look into it on a daily basis. They've got their own shit going on, they literally do not need to know every detail about you.

I know it sounds scary. It also sounds kind of boring, when we've been used to a certain "way" of browsing and participating for years, that if we don't do so, it feels like being in the "out group" and that we're "breaking the rules". But I promise you, after spending over half my life online, those rules do not exist or benefit anyone who wouldn't profit off that information.

If you're wanting to learn how to branch off from major platforms like Facebook and Twitter and/or become more self-sufficient online, here are some guides to navigating the Internet like an old schooler that may help you!

FREE SITE BUILDER:

DIGITAL PIRACY 101:

(also in addition to everything mentioned here ^^^ they neglect to also mention Tor Browser which is a light and free-to-use browser software that allows you to browse anonymously; note that it's similar to a VPN in that it helps hide your identity online, HOWEVER it won't mask you from your ISP quite as effectively as a VPN, and if you sign into personal accounts with Tor, that's still going to obviously out you online lmao but I love using Tor for the odd time when I need to make a sock puppet for something and don't want it linked to my IP! and unlike a VPN, it's free to use!)

LEARN HOW TO USE RSS FEEDS:

People still use these! They're especially helpful for getting updates from your favorite pages and sites directly to your browser WITHOUT having to worry about stupid algorithm bullshit picking and choosing what you see. And many sites DO have RSS support once you know how to find it! (like adding in /rss at the end of a URL! Like this!)

FAKE EMAIL SERVICES:

LEARN HOW TO CODE IN HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT (AND MORE!):

DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS:

I hope this helps arm you with some new knowledge in how to navigate the Internet like a Certified Old Person™️(like meeee!) Make your secret alt blogs for besties! Make your formal Facebook accounts that are clean of personal information and present the most neutral, safe-for-work version of yourself and keep the fun stuff to the secret profiles and chat groups that are just for you and friends/family/etc!! It might be "inconvenient" to have multiple accounts for the same purpose, but it's also INCREDIBLY freeing and can make your online experience both safer and more enjoyable.

Being "less" of yourself online does not make you any less you. It is your identity - you do not owe any amount of it to anyone beyond yourself. And in times like these, your identity is your greatest asset. Protect it.

Please don’t pirate books at least while the author is alive. I’ll make an exception for actual billionaires and wildly expensive textbooks you cannot afford yet need to complete your studies. I can’t make an exception for assholes, because we’re all considered assholes by someone.  I don’t know how many people realise how many writers who created successful, beloved stories and characters still die poor while other people get rich off the same work. I don’t think people realise that in the UK the current average yearly earnings for an author has nosedived over the last fifteen years to £10,500. That obviously is forcing people to quit writing. It increasingly means writing is a job for people who’ve inherited money or have wealthy spouses who can support them. I don’t know if people realise that in general, writers are poor and getting poorer. I’m sorry, but if you think widespread sense of entitlement to free books has nothing to do with that … you’re just wrong. 

I say I don’t think people realise - the truth is I hope they don’t, because the alternative is that they don’t care. That’s certainly the impression I’ve got from Twitter, where a truly horrifying number of people are arguing that copyright on  all books should expire after thirty years, and you should be able to acquire books for  free after that. This … would not just mean that everyone gets free books. It would mean if you write a book at 30, not only do you lose any royalties from it at 60, but Disney can take it, make a franchise out of it, Scrooge McDuck it up in a pool of money while you starve because writers don’t get workplace pensions.

Some threads on the unintended (?) consequences of this. I can’t go over it all again. John Brownlow NK Jemisin Michael Marshall Smith Me Marina Lostetter Kari Dru and others William Gibson and others

There are plenty of others. It’s not that this actual idea will actually happen, but I do think it reinforces the idea that it’s not only okay, but sometimes actually virtuous to search for ways to enjoy writers’ work without paying for it. Like it’s somehow a step towards a better world. Not just at the reader end, to be fair, at the employer end too. And I do see a lot of people here too who are all about supporting workers unless the workers are writers in which case fuck’em. 

Like. If you want to radically change society in such a way that mass-media conglomerates don’t exist and so can’t exploit us and we’re supported to make art in some other way than fine. But can you start the revolution with actual rich people please, not ask us to live right now, in the society we’ve got, without the money we need to survive it. Finally, a plea: I really, really, do not want to debate this. This whole thing genuinely makes me feel tense and shaky and sick. If you’ve got to disagree - unfollow me, block me, vagueblog somewhere I can’t see it. The Twitter version of this already has me feeling like I’ve been kicked in the gut. I didn’t want to write this post. I just felt I wasn’t going to have any peace until I did.

If you don’t want to buy a book outright, please consider getting it from your local public library (or your school library if you’re a student). If the library does not have the book you want, you can usually make a purchase suggestion and the collections staff will consider if it’s possible to procure the item based on availability and budget, or you can just do an interlibrary loan request and the library will try to get a copy on loan for you from another library system. In some libraries I’ve worked for, the ILL staff will actually look at the cost of the item, and if it’s under a certain amount, they’ll automatically just buy it instead of requesting it, because it’s cheaper and involves less work.

Libraries are a great middle ground if you can’t afford to pay for a book but don’t want to pirate the material, and a lot of libraries use apps like Libby/Overdrive and Borrow Box so that there are also materials online.

Publishing companies will use book piracy (ie lack of sale numbers) to excuse paying us even less, so it’s not just our published books we lose money on, it’s our future advances. To put an extremely blunt end on it: the books I wrote on a 6 figure advance (the money was spread out over three years, so it was still >$80K/year) are much better than the books I write at $40K (not just because I have to cram to get that split over 2 years instead of 3, and since $20K/year isn’t enough, I have to get another contract).

The corporations don’t care if you pirate books. It actually *helps* them. But it sure screws writers over.